Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Brimsham Green School (Yate) Visit

I hope they have recovered from a barrage of talk from me (3 hours is a long time) - and thanks for inviting me. I hope you can use the comments here to ask any further questions / post comments. I also wanted to follow up on a few things I talked about.

In reference to Natural Law, I came across a good piece re Aquinas at http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aquinas.htm - and am still mulling over the notion of ethics as relating to the perversion of purpose: and how to translate this into practical terms: how does it help with real ethical situations - other than the sexual ones we discussed (at some length - sorry about that).

Our discussion about life after death wandered into Philosophy of Mind (see http://r-p-e.blogspot.com/2007/10/nagels-bat.html for a link re some of the topics) - but I think that this makes sense. In order to even begin to address whether we survive death, we need to know what we are: and as the body is dead, in the ground, lying in a ditch, or cremated - we need to have some sense of what else there may be that could have the potential to 'survive death'...

We also covered Religious Experience - but I think I may have digressed.. Comments welcome from those at Brimsham Green - and of course any of our students who recall the EdExcel Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics) days of their (relative) youth...Next week - Wiltshire...Dave